River bank in the fog

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River bank in the fog (Caspar David Friedrich)
River bank in the fog
Caspar David Friedrich , around 1821
Oil on canvas
22 × 33.5 cm
Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud , Cologne

Riverside in the Fog is a painting by Caspar David Friedrich around 1821. The painting is also known as the Elbe Ship in the Morning Fog .

plant

The painting shows the banks of the Elbe near Dresden , presumably from the "viewpoint of Friedrich's studio ", which was located on today's Terrassenufer . In the foreground you can see a lawn with small willows and various flowers in clear colors. The meadow plants are painted comparatively large, as if the painter had been sitting on the ground. In contrast, the middle and background appear blurred in blue-gray tones indicating fog. The fog dissipates in the rising sun. A river with a barge and a smaller dinghy can be seen in the middle distance. Three men working on the barge complete the scene. Since the cargo ship has no sails, it is drifting downstream and is held in the direction of the third man at the helm. The river thus flows to the right. A patch of lawn partially obscures the river. It forms an ascending line in the picture and, with the descending line of the chain of hills, creates a kind of arrow that also indicates the direction of flow of the river. The background of the picture is formed by the implied chain of hills with trees, which is also described in a foggy, blurred color.

interpretation

At first glance it could be a landscape painting and as such it was perceived by the public at the Dresden Academy Exhibition of 1822. It fits in with a series of fog depictions by Caspar David Friedrich during this period. This painting certainly aroused criticism at the time. "A thick, white haze is so heavy that the famous artist's name remains the only ray of sunshine that illuminates it." This criticism falls short. Although the painting depicts a seemingly romantic moment on the banks of the Elbe, it was painted in the studio. It is not an open air painting . For Caspar David Friedrich, landscape is synonymous with an allegory of hope, death and eternal life. Friedrich's landscape painting thus makes use of a secret language of symbolism "... which was not only a means of communication for artists, but also a means of spiritual liberation." Accordingly, the painting is interpreted in such a way that “The cargo ship with the three struggling people ... is a symbol of human life, the river is the river of life that flows towards the mouth, death. The drifting fog that still envelops the ship signifies to him “the cloudiness of human existence”, which is dissolved by the sun, a symbol of God. The blooming meadow is the symbol of life but also the indication of its rapid transience, since the flowers would soon have faded. ”Since the mast of the Elbe ship is to the left of the center of the picture, the middle of life has not yet been reached. Even the rising fog stands for Friedrich's symbolic conception of time.

This painting is intended to encourage the viewer to think beyond the moment and is thus a landscape of meaning and a “key work” of Romanticism .

Provenance

The picture was acquired in 1942 from the Graf Hahn collection, Basedow Castle (Mecklenburg), for the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum.

literature

  • Werner Hofmann : The divided century, art between 1750 and 1830 . Beck, Munich 1995.
  • Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen: picture surveys . Taschen, Cologne 2016.

Selection of similar fog pictures from this time by Caspar David Friedrich

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan : Caspar David Friedrich . exp. Edition. Prestel, Munich 1987, p. 128.
  2. ^ Stephanie Sonntag and Andreas Blühm (eds.): Wallraf das Museum . 3. Edition. DuMont, Cologne 2016, p. 238.
  3. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan : Caspar David Friedrich . exp. Edition. Prestel, Munich 1987, p. 128.
  4. ^ Volker Gebhardt: Art history of German art . Revised new edition. DuMont, Cologne 2009, p. 135.
  5. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich . exp. Edition. Prestel, Munich 1987, p. 12.
  6. ^ H. Börsch-Supan and KW Jähing: Caspar David Friedrich paintings, prints and pictorial drawings . Prestel, Munich, 1973, p. 369.
  7. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich . exp. Edition. Prestel, Munich 1987, p. 12.
  8. ↑ Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung (Ed.): Neue Pinakothek . 4th edition. DuMont, Munich and Cologne 2014, p. 440.